The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUABY 23, 1887. THE CODLIN MOTH.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1490, 23 February 1887, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUABY 23, 1887. THE CODLIN MOTH.

Of all the pests — and their name is legion — which afflict orchardists and fruit-growers generally there is perhaps none so productive of widespread mischief as the insect which entomotogtsts have endowed with the highsounding appellation af CarpocapsaPomonclla, but which is more familiarly known as the codlin moth. Those who have visited Tasmania know what havoc this scourge of the apple and pear tree has wrought, and can tell of acres of fruit trees the great part of whose produce is strewn p-ematurely upon the ground through the ravages ot this unpleasantly prolific and mischievously active little insect. In America also, we believe, it has done enormous injury, and it is not too mucb| o say that its presence m a district speedily means the impossibility of growing to profit two of the most useful fruits known to man. The moth itself is not m its adult state the offender, but its gtubs or larvae,^ which bore their way into the fruit, causing it to drop from the trees m a half-ripe condition, it often happening m bddly infected orchards that nearly the whole atop is lost m this way. The Codlin Moth Act, passed by the Legislature of this Colony m 1884, on the model of the Tasmanian Act of the same name, was, therefore, a wise and necessary piece of legislation, the provisions of which cannot be too strictly enforced. It empowers any Borough or County Conncil on the receipt of a petition signed by five or more occupiers of orchards (ihis term including gardens and all lands upon which fruit trees are growing) to proclaim any district known to be infected an unclean district, and to enforce regulations for the destruction of the moth, and for the cleansing or destroying of infected trees. 3ut as such proclamation carries with it the power to levy a rate for this purpose, and may not be issued if a counter memorial containing a larger number of signatures is presented to the governing body, this part of the Act is, we fear, practically a dead letter. To make it effectual, power should be given to orchardists m a clean district adjoining an infected district to bring the law* into operation within the latter, and until this is the case the Act will, we feel persuaded, remain inoperative. As regards infected districts beyond the Colony the Act is efficient enough, the (Governor having power to deal with these by proclamation forbidding the importation of fruit or fruit trees from such districts ; that power having been exercised and being now m exercise as regards infected fruit, the Customs Department regularly examining and often condemning for this reason consignments received from Tasmania and elsewhere. But there are, and have been for years, infected districts within the colony, for example m Nelson and Taranaki, and yet we are not aware that those districts have been proclaimed as such, or that the sending of fruit therefrom to other pans of the colony has been forbidden. Surely some machinery should be devised to meet this case, and the Act should, we think, be amended so as to confer upon the Governor, or some authority other than the local authority of an infected district, the power to declare it infected, if no action to that end be taken by the local authority. Again,- it is no doubt true that as regards importations of fruit from beyond the colony the examination made by the Customs Department is merely a check upon, not a preventative of, the importation of the moth; and as we can grow abundance of apples and pears ourselves there would be no hardship m forbidding the importation of those fruits altogether, thus absolutely shutting out the danger to which the clean districts of the colony, of which Canterbury is happily as yet one, are now exposed. The memorial which is now being circulated for signature m this and other districts m Canterbury, (and to which reference was made by us the other day) is therefore a practical outcome of the sentiment that prevention is better than cure, and we hope that it wil\ be numerously signed, and that His Excellency will be advised to give effect to it by prohibiting the importation of apples and pears at any port m tbe colony. If this be objected to by

non-fruitgrowing districts, then let importation be stopped at all ports m Canterbury, and let all parts of the colony, where importation is permitted, be treated as infected districts, so far as Canterbury is concerned, by forbidding th"* sending of fruit from such districts into Canterbury. If this cannot be done under the Codlin Moth Act as it now stands, the Act should be amended to render this course possible, as if out neighbors choose to run the risk of infection they have no right to j con. pel us to do the same.